Category Archives: College-related Publications

Play Ball!!

Late March and the first days of April have traditionally been the start of baseball season and this year is no different. Today marks, for some, the start of time, especially as life re-emerges from the slumber of winter. As W.P. Kinsella wrote in Shoeless Joe (later turned into the successful film Field of Dreams), “…the one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.”

One of the items that was, for all intents and purposes, erased from the memory of Wheaton College was a small little notebook in the Charles Blanchard papers. As the Archives & Special Collections has moved the descriptive information about its holdings into an archival management system (archon.wheaton.edu) staff have been reviewing box inventories and the contents of collections. One of the items that emerged was a scrapbook of clippings. Listed under “General Files” this little notebook turned out to have started out life as a baseball scorebook, circa 1868-1869, from the earliest decades of American baseball. 1869 was the year that saw America’s first professional baseball team, The Cincinnati Red Stockings. This scorebook was hidden away under pasted clippings with titles like “Temperance,” “Oddfellowship,” “The Fifteenth Amendment,” “The British Question” and many more.

Charles Blanchard clippings scrapbook with baseball statisticsThe obscured pages have yet to be fully revealed, due to the pasted articles, but what is easily found are some of the names of the players, the positions they played and the statistics gathered for inning by inning action. The style of the statistics follows an older “box score” format that more resembled Cricket scoring that kept track of O-s and R-s, or, the number of “putouts” and “runs.” The statistics show a very different game than we see today as players, like Blanchard, are listed as scoring ten runs in a game with final scores of 53 to 29 not out of the ordinary.

In the roster section Charles Blanchard’s name appears numerous times and on one occasion we see that he manned second base. Other names that appear on the roster are Sox (a fitting name for baseball), Ramsey, Fischer, Hiatt and Bliss. Another name that appears, and has appeared in this blog before, is that of “Hemingway.” Since the earliest clippings in the notebook date from 1868, the year following the last known date of Anson Hemingway’s attendance at Wheaton, we can properly assume that the baseball player is the paternal grandfather of noted American author Ernest Hemingway. The younger Hemingway loved baseball as well and while living in Cuba erected a field and gathered local boys for two teams to whom he’d pitch. In this early baseball scorebook we see that the elder Hemingway, who later went on to work for the YMCA in Chicago, played third base.

In America professional baseball is nearing its sesquicentennial and amateur play is older than that. For decades each spring has brought forth flowering bulbs and hopes for a pennant. In Chicago, for Cubs fans at least, that hope, according to Alexander Pope, springs eternal. Maybe this is the year?

One could say that baseball keeps one young. Below is a photograph of Charles Blanchard at a ripe old of 72 years old giving it one more swing!

Charles Blanchard, ca. 1920

On My Mind – Mary Hopper

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Conducting Mary Hopper was featured in the Spring 1993 issue.

Mary HopperAs I was driving to the College one day last fall, I tuned in to the public radio station. A discussion of women’s issues was in progress, and I found myself in total agreement with the speaker as she described the strides and setbacks women have made in the professional world.

Then she made a statement to the effect that the entire future of women’s rights hinged on the abortion issue, If anyone was watching me as I drove along Harrison Street, they would have been amazed to see me, first nodding in agreement, and then, suddenly, furiously shaking my head.

During the political campaign last year, I became quite distressed over the discussions that polarized the right-wing expression of “family values” and the left-wing advocacy of pro-choice. This reasoning appeared to provide only two alternatives for women: either to choose a traditional, early twentieth century female role, or to become “pro-choice/liberal” career women.

Where does this leave single women, single-parent families, couples unable to have children, and women who honestly seek to develop the gifts that God has bestowed upon them in addition to those of being wives and mothers? How many women in our country work because they have to support a family? How is a woman to function in her family?

There are many questions about the role of women in society. As a working mother myself, I struggle with such issues every day. It is not surprising that many Christian women today wonder with uncertainty about their future.

Two years ago, I taught a student who decided to leave Wheaton because her goal in life was to be a housewife and mother, and she didn’t want to work as hard to get her college degree as she would have to work at Wheaton. She was a very bright and gifted young musician with great potential for teaching. Her mind was made up, but in counseling with her, I shared my perceptions about her decision. I told her about some of my friends’ marriages, which were unhappy or had ended in divorce because both partners were not devoted to the full development of their talents. Having been single myself for quite a few years, I pointed out to her that not everyone is destined for marriage. I challenged her not to throw away her gifts merely because she was waiting for the right relationship to come along.

At Wheaton, many women are role models for our young women–they may he single; married, with or without families; at different stages of their lives; and working in almost any area of the College. I have come to realize that part of my calling to teach at Wheaton is to try to live as a woman devoted to serving Christ through her profession, her marriage, and her family.

Another part of my role as a professor is to help my students recognize and develop their gifts. In the parable of the talents, Jesus exhorts us all to develop the gifts that have been given to us, not to bury them. Many of our young women are surprised to learn that they have anything to contribute. Some live with such insecurity that it is a major revelation to them to think that they can he competent conductors, or teach music lessons, or acquire the self-confidence to perform.

I rejoice when I think of women I have taught working in the business world, in education, on the mission field, in graduate school, and in their homes. I am thankful for the small part I have been able to play in their development during the years they spent at Wheaton College.

My prayer is that Wheaton will continue to provide role models of many kinds for our students, whether those role models are trustees, faculty, staff, or administrators. It should he apparent to our students that we are all concerned about our personal lives as well as our professional lives. And it should be clear to our students that we care about them, as we push them to achieve the most they can during their years at Wheaton.

Ultimately, the measure of our success as educators and as mentors is the degree to which they learn to serve the Lord with their whole being in the exercise of their talents and skills, as well as in their attention to their roles as men and women.

———-

Mary Hopper is Professor of Choral Music and Conducting at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music. She also conducts both the Men’s Glee Club and the Women’s Chorale and has toured nationally and internationally with both ensembles to great success. She holds degrees from Wheaton College and the University of Iowa, where she studied with Don V. Moses. Before coming to Wheaton, Dr. Hopper taught public school music in the Chicago area, and choral conducting and voice at the University of Minnesota (Morris). Her ensembles frequently appear at conventions of the ACDA, most recently, the Women’s Chorale at the National Convention in New York City, February 2003. The Men’s Glee Club will appear at the Illinois ACDA Convention in October, 2008. Dr. Hopper is in demand nationally as a guest conductor and clinician. During the 2007-08 academic year she conducted the Illinois and Louisiana All-State Choirs. She has served ACDA as Illinois State President and is presently ACDA Central Division President-Elect. In October 2010 she received the Distinguished Service to Alma Mater Award at Homecoming.

What Wheaton College Did for Me: Herb Jauchen

JauchenThis remembrance by Herb Jauchen ’40 is the first in a series published by Wheaton College Alumni magazine, beginning January, 1966. He served as Vice President of Westmont College and Vice President of advertising for Christian Life Publications. Previously he had managed department stores in Oregon for 13 years, following five years in the US Army during WW II. For two years, 1969-70, he was the Wheaton National Alumni Fund Chairman.

While many rightfully attribute their current successful positions to praying mothers, fathers, parents or Christian homes, the Lord knows I must honestly attribute all of my present blessings to the life He began and shaped for me during four years at Wheaton College, made possible by the faithfulness and dedication of the college family unto God. Those were the lean, post-depression years of the late ’30s, and many of us at that time (interestingly, including most of the then-struggling varsity teams) knew what 40-50-hour work weeks meant, along with tiring practices and full academic schedules.

From the beginning, for me, a young man without a home, who even then already had seen much of life in the raw, Wheaton quickly became my home. It began with the warm welcome of upperclassmen like Dayton Roberts, Roger McShane and Bob Lazear and ended, physically, after four years of warm friendship and acceptance by a host of faculty, administration and students alike – four of the happiest and most memorable years of my life. The most important event of those years of many recognitions and awards, however, was the joy, late in Junior year, along with the girl who later became my wife, Joanna Cochran, of being introduced to and receiving Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Strangely, I had been at Wheaton nearly three full years before anyone personally and individually explained Jesus Christ to me. Late one May evening, the faithfulness of Evan Welsh was again used of God, as it has been innumerable times before and since, in leading Joanna and me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Our lives were completely changed from that time on. Yes, above all, Wheaton College was used not only to lead me into the Christian life but also to give me a wonderful, God-honoring wife and mother of our five children, was well as a sound Christian and academic education. In addition, Wheaton has given me true and tested friends from both faculty, administration and student body alike – V.R. Edman, K.B. Tiffany, Ed Coray, Don Kennedy, Manly Wilcox and many others – who have continued faithful through the years, even as they were during often-difficult undergraduate days.

Almost daily, also, in some 25 years of military, business and Christian service experience, has come to mind and use some of the rich lessons of life first learned in the classrooms, athletic events and campus activities of college days. For truly God has been good in giving knowledge and wisdom to raise up a Christian home and family, following His precepts and playing according to the rules of the game both in home and business. Never having had a Christian home before attending Wheaton, it is thrilling to see my children enjoy the benefits of lessons first taught me there. Recently, my 19-year-old son John wrote that he had just realized my own ultimate success would be measured by the success of my children, above all, spiritually. It was especially gratifying to have that letter come from Wheaton, where he is now in his second year, earning his own way also, by choice, and already learning many more of life’s rich lessons that can be so well learned there. It is our prayer that his younger brothers and sisters also will be able to attend Wheaton and continue on to the mission field, even as John and his older sister Jan are presently planning to do.

The theme of the Wheaton Centennial was the faithfulness of Wheaton to the cause of Christ. I thank God for that faithfulness – of its founders, its faculty, administration, and alumni – not only through past years, but also today, in this era of intellectual unrest, and I pray what will be tomorrow should our Lord tarry. Only by this continuing faithfulness, which has done so much for me, can my children and thousands of other children who will attend Wheaton in the years ahead have the opportunity of being blessed and privileged in beginning life’s journey on their own on sound Christian principles, precepts and learning – for His honor and His glory.

On My Mind – Richard Butman

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Psychology Richard Butman was featured in the Winter 1992 issue.

One of the most satisfying and stimulating aspects of my job at Wheaton is the opportunity to travel in this country and abroad. Most recently, I had the opportunity to attend a conference on “Power Within Diversity: Confronting Moral Issues in a Multi-Racial/Multi-Cultural Community and World.” Several hundred participants met for four days on the University of Toronto campus in an effort to facilitate dialogue and discussion about those differences and their implications for moral education. That interaction was strongly influenced by the setting of the conference, According to the United Nations, Toronto is now the most culturally and racially diverse city in the world.

One of the greatest challenges facing Wheaton today is how best to come to grips with the increasing pluralism of contemporary society. Few would doubt that we need to be more multi-cultural/ international in our concerns and consciousness than we are at the present. The debate is over how best to become more intentional about that diversity in all aspects of our college life. In short, how do we best equip ourselves to act responsibly as Christians in a pluralistic society where justice for all faiths must be maintained? Put succinctly, this is the challenge of pluralism.

Christian philosopher and ethicist Richard J. Mouw has just written a wonderfully helpful book on the subject called Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (InterVarsity, 1992). He argues that dialogue and discussion are not facilitated when we become extremely dogmatic and rigid (i.e., too much “conviction”) or overly accommodating (i.e., “civility” to the point of advocating relativism). What he does advocate is a kind of “convicted civility,” a humility that doesn’t let our religious fervor blind us to our own humanity or that of the persons with whom we disagree.

An emphasis on personal piety and evangelism has been a rich part of Wheaton’s heritage. In recent decades, that has been increasingly linked to helping the student develop a Christian world-and-life-view. Perhaps the most difficult task we face today is to find ways to equip and motivate students to find distinctively and decidedly Christian ways of being and acting in the world-at-large.

Few of us lack strong convictions at Wheaton. Perhaps where we need to stretch is in the direction of greater civility and humility. For a community that strives to serve the church and society-at-large, we need to be especially sensitive to how we define what it really means to be a Christian in contemporary society. Consider the words of Wheaton alumnus Horace L. Fenton ’32, D.D. ’61:

“We mean to proclaim, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’ But what we often say is, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and accept our cultural patterns, our economic, political, and social outlook, our views of baptism and the Holy Spirit, our interpretation of prophecy, our organizational relationships –and thou shalt be saved” (taken from The Trouble with Barnacles, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, p. 14).

We need to be careful about giving to cultural or social convictions the same standing as truths we have received from divine revelation. Fenton goes on to argue that “If the sin of liberalism is to subtract from the revelation of God, it may well be that the sin of evangelicals is too often an unwitting attempt to add to it” (p. 15). Surely efforts to diversify or internationalize our environment at Wheaton will be thwarted if we add to the revelation of God by too deeply embracing a “cultural style” that expects–or even demands–conformity “for the sake of unity.”

I am not advocating that we cower in timid silence in our increasingly pluralistic society. I do believe it is possible–but never easy–to be both faithful to the Word and respectful of others. If we seriously commit ourselves to exploring that “power within diversity,” I suspect we will learn that the church is vastly larger and richer than we ever dreamed.

———-
Richard E. Butman has taught courses in psychological assessment, psychopathology, psychotherapy, and the psychology of religion at Wheaton since 1980. He received his B.A. in psychology and his M.A. in theological studies from Wheaton and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He is a licensed psychologist in Illinois. His clinical and research interests include the impact of fathers on their children across the lifespan, psychosocial development in young adulthood, and the assessment of religiosity. He was named Junior Teacher of the Year for 1988-89. His current interests include bereavement and psychopathology. He is currently working on collaborative projects in both areas. His commitment to promoting holistic development has lead to direct involvement in ministries in Africa, Asia, Chicago, and Latin America. Dr. Butman has co-authored (with Stanton L. Jones) Modern Psychotherapies: A Christian Appraisal (InterVarsity,1991) and (with Barrett McRay and Mark Yarhouse) Modern Psychopathologies: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal (Intervarsity, 2005). A second edition of Modern Psychotherapies: A Christian Appraisal is currently being written with an anticipated release in 2011. Dr. Butman is also involved in a shared project in the areas of integration and the spiritual/sociocultural foundations of mental health.

What Wheaton College Did for Me: Harold Lindsell

This remembrance by Harold Lindsell appeared in the Wheaton College Alumni Magazine, as part of a series called “What Wheaton College Did for Me.”

LindsellMy life has never been the same for having gone to Wheaton. I came to alma mater having been out of high school and in business for five years. As a result of business experience my objectives were clarified. I came to Wheaton with a definite purpose in mind. I intended to major in business administration and to return to the world I left to go to college. All of this was changed, however. Wheaton’s greatest contribution to my life came in February of 1936 when there was a great revival. The speaker for the midyear evangelistic effort was Robert C. McQuilkin of Columbia Bible College where I later taught. I sat through those days as the Holy Spirit worked graciously and my own life and walk were permanently affected. God broke through human barriers. He spoke and I responded. I changed my major from business administration to history. This, in turn, led later to postgraduate study, the Christian ministry and theological seminary training.

Wheaton afforded me another opportunity for gratitude through the medium of certain faculty members who were genuinely helpful during my college years – Drs. Nystrom, Tiffany, Clark, Edman, Straw and Miss Erickson, to name a few. Teaching is more than books. It is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a boy on the other. It is person interacting with person. These were some of the teachers who left an indelible impression on me and who were a special blessing. Wheaton also brought me in contact with students who became fast friends and with whom my life has been intertwined for thirty years. This has been especially true for one who has been in full time Christian service. In all the years of Christian service I have never labored any place where there were not some of the Wheaton graduates with whom I formed friendships on campus. This gift of Wheaton has been a never failing source of blessing to me.

Wheaton also gave me a good liberal arts education. I learned how to study and how to use my time to the best advantage. It brought me to a place in my use of the Bible where, as a student, I determined to read it through once a year – and I have done so for more than a quarter of a century. Perhaps the acid test of one’s opinion of his alma mater is “Would I choose it again if I were commencing my college education today?” My answer to this question is simple: my oldest daughter has graduated from Wheaton; my second daughter is presently a student there; my third daughter looks forward to Wheaton with expectation. And God willing, my only son will become a loyal son of alma mater when his turn comes.

On My Mind – Charles Weber

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of History Charles Weber was featured in the October/November 1992 issue.

Chuck WeberEarlier this year [1992] the Los Angeles Times reported that the word “global” and its derivatives, such as “globalization,” “globalize,” and (worst of all) “global-ability,” is “fast becoming the business cliche of the 1990s.” We can expect that the use of the term global will increase dramatically in business and politics. Simply reading the newspaper and traveling outside North America makes this observation abundantly clear as we consider the long-range implications of the so-called New World Order. For most of us living in North America it is evident that our own society and communities are increasingly more culturally and ethnically diverse. Global change is all around us.

In my own discipline of history there is a growing tendency to emphasize history’s cosmopolitan aspects and to internationalize the discipline both in scope and in its comparative methodology. It is now expected that one must analyze the larger theoretical and international implications of more specific studies.

In many ways the church has led the way in this globalization. Next year marks the bicentennial of the inception of voluntary missionary agencies started by William Carey. These agencies provided a great impetus to the modern missionary movement. While much has been written about the impact of this movement, it has resulted in a significantly different, worldwide Christian community.

Two hundred years ago over 99 percent of all Christians lived in Western cultures. A hundred years ago this figure was about 94 percent. Today about two-thirds of all Christians live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, or Oceania. And the new center of gravity for our Lord’s Church is continuing to shift in this direction.

The prominence of these new churches outside the West is accentuating the global character of the church in many directions. Now these churches outside Europe and North America represent over 1,100 of their own missionary-sending organizations with over 36,000 missionaries. During the last year I have had the privilege of teaching, with Alumni Association assistance, at two centers of the Asian Graduate School of Theology in Indonesia and Korea. What a thrill it is to see the vision of mature, young adults from various parts of Africa and Asia preparing themselves intellectually and spiritually to augment the growth of the church in their home societies and beyond, Likewise their vision has broadened my own.

On campus we are attempting to respond to this globalization. Students must take a course specializing in another culture. Many faculty members and students have involved themselves in academic and ministry activities in regions of growing Christian influence. The College sponsors study programs to East Asia, the Middle East, and various parts of Europe, while the HNGR program encourages, for both students and faculty, study and service in developing nations.

My hope is that as our world becomes more global in its thinking and action–politically, economically, and spiritually–that our thinking will adjust to these new conditions all around us. Our thinking needs to accommodate the new dimensions of the world in which we are living.

———-
Chuck Weber, Professor of History, has been teaching at Wheaton since 1968. He earned both his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in African History and East Asian International Relations. Chuck founded Wheaton’s East Asia study program in 1974 and among the founders of the HNGR program. Dr. Weber’s teaching and research is focused mainly on how African and Asian cultures have developed historically and how they influence the modern world. He is especially interested in how Christians have impacted these societies and the role Christians have played in the development of their national identity.

What Wheaton College Did for Me: Carl F.H. Henry

This remembrance by Carl F.H. Henry appeared in the April, 1966, Wheaton College Alumni Magazine, as part of a series called “What Wheaton College Did for Me.”

Carl FH HenryAcademically, high tide at Wheaton came during the senior course in theism and comprehensives, which helped to integrate previous years of study from a Christian perspective. There had been the rigorous discipline of Miss Blaine’s Latin classes, the high humor of Dr. Straw’s logic courses, the intellectual confrontation of Dr. Clark’s philosophy major, and too much more to record. Socially, there was the opportunity to establish enduring evangelical friendships that some day would span the earth, and to find my sweetheart and companion for a lifetime. Vocationally, there was the busy suburban “news beat” for Chicago and Wheaton papers, which helped a former reporter meet the collegiate budget. Devotionally, there were daily chapel, semester evangelistic or revival services, and the house prayer meetings. Spiritually, there were the Saturday night “Midnight Brigade” Sunday school classes at Mooseheart, and preaching opportunities.

All in all, it was a good experience. I have never wanted to undo it. Those of us who rubbed elbows on campus had a sense of destiny in the making. Elsewhere the tide of religion was mainly flowing the other way. We had no option but to drift with that stream or to put evangelical conviction to its test. Alumni went to the ends of the earth, to the frontiers of faith, some to places of peril – and in that time of turbulence they stood firm. It was a great heritage – one we hoped future generations (our children as well) could and would discover and preserve for themselves.

On My Mind – Beatrice Batson

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of English Emeritus E. Beatrice Batson (who taught at Wheaton from 1957-1987) was featured in the August/September 1991 issue.

Beatrice BatsonWhen I came to teach at Wheaton in the autumn of 1957, I discovered a nucleus of professors and students charged with excitement over Wheaton’s mission as a Christian liberal arts college. Combined with this concern was the belief that mind and spirit should he so constantly and consistently nurtured that complacency would be highly unlikely to make permanent inroads. I found the atmosphere extraordinarily exhilarating. Admittedly, some of us were idealists; perhaps such idealists that not a few individuals determined to find new and different ways of talking about the whole educational process. Through the decades, however, there were still those who were unable to think dispassionately of Wheaton’s mission. Similar zeal is by no means absent in 1991.

Several years following that autumn of 1957, I met at a professional conference one of my former students, then an advanced graduate student at Yale. Among the first questions he asked me were: ‘What are Wheaton students really like now?” and “Is the faculty remembering the mission of the College?” Or in paraphrase, “Are faculty members consciously aware that they are teaching human beings who must make moral and spiritual responses in life ?”

My reply to him was another question: “What kind of student do you wish to see at Wheaton?” Quick as a flash, he answered, “Hungry students. Let them he cynical, and let them be angry.” He continued, “But whatever they are, be sure they are hungry–hungry for nourishment that feeds mind, heart, and spirit.” What came clear was that somebody had a heavy and joyous responsibility. “To study at a college like Wheaton,” he insisted, “is to he exposed to a faculty and a curriculum that will not let students forget the large human questions of meaning and purpose.” However excellent the speakers at that professional conference may have been, it was the urgent tone of my former student’s pleas that lingered longest in my memory.

With the onslaught of unparalleled campus unrest in many colleges and universities during the late sixties and early seventies, prophets of doom began to declare that the liberal arts ideal would wither away or bit by bit literally slip from consideration in the strongest liberal arts colleges. Problems were far too complex, we were frequently told, for contemporary students to spend time on “the arcane vestiges of the past,” as critics pejoratively titled the liberal arts. To jettison every thinker and artist prior to the late twentieth century seemed no solution to some of us. Minds and imaginations burnished on Plato and Aristotle, Aeschylus and Shakespeare, Augustine and Kierkegaard (and scores of others) might well be the sort of informal minds and lively imaginations that should be working on different issues, we reasoned. Besides, students hungered for meaning and purpose.

What my former student urged still persisted in my mind in more recent years when numerous educational leaders held that students were in college to acquire a passport to immediate pleasure, instant success, and economic affluence. This indictment, however, failed to dissuade some of us from our firm belief in the mission of a Christian liberal arts college.

When I left close contact with the thinking of students and faculty for retirement in 1988, I continued to teach one course in Shakespeare. Although I was aware of new theories that pervaded scholarly writing and knew of the abuse that pseudo-scholars heaped upon those who affirmed the liberal arts ideal, I continued to discover that students did not consider Shakespeare’s works to be anachronisms. They perceived that his inimitable writings embodied large human questions and always-contemporary subjects even though the great artist wrote 400 years before they were horn.

In October 1990, I came from active retirement to serve as Kilby Professor of English and from October to May as acting chair, due to the serious illness of my colleague, Dr. Joe McClatchey. In these responsibilities, I had a closer contact with students and more interaction with faculty.

Since that autumn in 1957, many changes have occurred. In this year, 1990-91, faculty were challenging luminaries on their own ground, discussing terms not even named in 1957; students were wrestling with new issues, thinking hard on complexities born of their technological age. As before, there was still a nucleus who saw themselves as “privileged inheritors of a rich legacy” the mission of the Christian liberal arts college. I have a deep conviction, even in my most pessimistic moments, that Wheaton has in its community particular individuals who know that they are “custodians of something immensely valuable,” and they sense a dire need to keep it alive.

———-
Dr. E. Beatrice Batson, Professor Emerita of English, was chair of the department for 13 years. During the academic year 1990-91, she served as Kilby Professor of English and as acting chair. Since her retirement she continues her work as coordinator of the Shakespeare Collection and has organized bi-annual institutes for undergraduate teachers of Shakespeare, sponsored by the Shakespeare Special Collection, since 1992. She received the Wheaton College Alumni Association Distinguished Service to Alma Mater Award in 2007.

To the Moon!

On this 40th anniversary year of the Apollo 14 space mission it is appropriate to consider Wheaton’s relationship to space.

For nearly 70 years a domed observatory, resembling a derelict space capsule fallen to Earth, stood conspicuously on the front lawn of Blanchard Hall. With its telescopic eye poised to the stars, the “Lemon,” as it was nicknamed, informed generations of students about the graceful syncopations of celestial bodies. LemonSince its 1972 relocation to Camp Honey Rock, the Lemon has been replaced by two successive observatories, both situated atop Wheaton’s science buildings. Since its inception Wheaton College has studied the metaphysical Heaven of the Bible, but the observatory symbolizes its engagement with the physical heavens – and those who’ve set their gaze on that boundless expanse.

Harold Lee Alden, born in Chicago, graduated from Wheaton College in 1912. He acquired his master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1913. After that he earned his doctorate in astronomy in 1917 from the University of Virginia, where he researched at the McCormick Observatory, using its 26-inch telescope, one of the largest in the world. In 1925 Yale developed a new telescope and shipped it to Johannesburg, South Africa, to observe the clear southern skies. Alden, sent to direct the program, lived there with his family for nearly 20 years, returning to the University of Virginia in 1945, where he served as professor of astronomy and director of the Observatory until retiring in 1960. He died at age 74. As one of 500 deceased men and women of science, including luminaries like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, Alden was honored to have a crater on the dark side of the Moon named after him.

As a youngster Paul W. Gast, also from Chicago, suffered poor health. Often staying home he read books and magazines like Moody Monthly, from which he learned about Wheaton College. “My ambition has always been research and experimentation,” he wrote on his application. “…And I felt if I was to go into this field it was necessary to go to college.” While at Wheaton, where he was recognized as a top student in chemistry, Gast met his future wife, Joyce, with whom he would parent three children. Graduating in 1952 he pursued advanced education and taught at several universities, notably as Professor of Geology at the University of Minnesota. In 1970 he was hired by NASA as Chief of the Planetary and Earth Sciences Division at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. As a member of the Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team, he advised NASA on the disposition of lunar samples brought to Earth by the Apollo missions. For his exemplary service Dr. Gast was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal, the Geochemical Society’s V.M. Goldschmidt Medal and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space Science Award. He was president of the Volcanology, Geochemistry and Petrology Section of the American Geochemistry Union, in addition to publishing numerous articles detailing the origin of volcanic rocks, the chemistry of Earth’s upper mantle and geochronology. In 1973 Wheaton College recognized him with its Alumni Service to Society Award. Sadly, Gast had been earlier diagnosed with cancer and died at age 43 in March of that year. “His death,” eulogized geochemist Dr. J. Lawrence Kulp, “is a loss to the nation, to science, to NASA, to his many friends and colleagues, but most deeply to those he loved – his family. May his memory strengthen us, may it enrich our lives and may it turn us to God. That was his desire.”

Grote Reber did not attend Wheaton College, though many of his relatives did. In 1937 Reber, using parts from the University of Chicago and elsewhere, built in his parents’ back yard in downtown Wheaton a radar dish for cosmic radio reception. For ten years he was the only active radio astronomer in the world, listening to the weak but constant static of the solar system. In 1944 he published his discoveries on radio wave transmissions in the Astrophysical Journal. His research paved the way for satellite communications, AM and FM radio bands and cell phones. Reber’s radar dish is now displayed in Green Bank, West Virginia, on the grounds of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Reber’s mother, a school teacher, stimulated her son’s interest in science with articles written by her former pupil, Edwin Hubble, another explorer of interstellar mysteries. Born in Missouri, Hubble lived for several years in the city of Wheaton, though he did not attend Wheaton College. Graduating from Wheaton High School, he entered the University of Chicago; then, as a Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University. In 1923 he published his paper, “Island Universes,” revealing his discoveries regarding redshifts, the increased wavelengths of radiation emitted by a celestial object. The nebulae farther away, he observed, were receding at the fastest rate, indicating an expanding universe. His seminal work placed him on the cover of Time magazine in 1930. National Geographic cited him as possibly the most important astronomer since Galileo, and Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time stated that “Hubble’s discovery that the Universe is expanding was one of the great intellectual revolutions of the 20th Century.” Not only is a middle school in Wheaton named after Hubble, but so is an orbiting telescope, known for its occasional malfunctions as much as for its spectacularly successful functionality. Edwin Hubble died in 1953.

Shannon Lucid was born in Shanghai, China, of parents working with China Inland Mission. When China closed to missionaries, the family moved to Bethany, Oklahoma. From 1960-62 Shannon attended Wheaton College, but departed before completing due to tuition increases, finishing her advanced education at the University of Oklahoma. In 1978 NASA selected her as an astronaut for its Space Shuttle flight crew. Flying multiple missions, Lucid held the record for most hours in orbit of any woman in the world; her record was broken in 2002. She also held the United States single mission flight endurance record on the Russian Space Station Mir. She was been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Russian Order of Friendship Medal. When asked by reporters if she found God in space, Dr. Lucid replies: “No. God found me years ago. That is your story.”

Some information for this entry is derived from Mary Anne Phemister’s 32 Wheaton Notables, their stories and where they lived.

Mary Bent Blanchard

This month marks the 120th anniversary of Mary Bent Blanchard’s death who died on January 11, 1890.

While traveling to California to visit her daughter Sonora Caroline, Mary died at age seventy-one in East Las Vegas, New Mexico. A fuller account is given in Four Hazardous Journeys of the Reverend Jonathan Blanchard by Raymond P. Fischer (grandson of Jonathan and Mary Blanchard).

Another account of Mary’s passing is recorded by Selima Blanchard Allen, Jonathan’s sister. In her diary on Saturday, January 4, 1890, she wrote: “Bro. Jonathan & sis. Mary preparing to go to California, they are very feeble.” On January 6, she noted that “The infirmed state of Bro. & Sister gives us anxiety, but it seemed to be the best they could do: So we have left it all with the Lord.” Her next entry is on January 14 where she wrote that they had received “telegrams & letters, giving account Sister Mary seemed to pass away quietly Pres. C.A. Blanchard started from Peoria to meet his Father.” In following days she provides small details of the wake and funeral.